Publisher's Synopsis
A romantic comedy with a delightfully biting literary edge, it's the story of Melissa, a sharp-eyed American abroad. Fired by her San Francisco ad agency, she cancels her wedding to Ted, 'the safest man I've ever met', and soon regrets her next impulsive move - across the Atlantic, as au pair to a minorly aristocratic British family, with the mother from hell, an ineffectual, sweet-natured father, and three children, one of them deaf. From freezing farmhouses and island castles in Scotland, to a faded house at a smart London address, Melissa observes the natives in their classic habitats, with their bizarre manners and unchanging habits - like the Romans, whom they take after, the people of these islands have fixed axles - their ingenuity and mean ways, their utterly disarming moments and surprisingly gorgeous, death-defying food. Urged to 'try to speak as we do' - lest the children catch her accent - she resists the effete charm of the British bourgeoisies but succumbs to the lure of lemon shortbread, and the sexy appeal of a lean and hungry Englishman, a far cry from the solid but absent Ted.
